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English edition of Wikipedia-number of articles

of the reference books annotated in Winchell (later Sheehy, then Balay, now Kieft) and honored in yearly reviews may give us false confidence that our expertise is widely understood and appreciated. In the 21st century these skills make little difference unless we connect them to the world’s largest and most used reference tool—Wikipedia.

Academic bias against Wikipedia was discussed in 2007 at Inside Higher Education as Middlebury college history professors banned its use, although the columnist points out that an analysis of the accuracy of Wikipedia for The Journal of American History found that in many entries, Wikipedia was as accurate or more accurate than more traditional encyclopedias. Now seven years old, the 161 comments attached to the column illuminate librarian and faculty opinions heavily critical of Wikipedia as a source.

In a 2010 study of Wikipedia use in higher education Head and Eisenberg point out: “Far more students, than not, used Wikipedia….Reasons for using Wikipedia were diverse: Wikipedia provided students with a summary about a topic, the meaning of related terms, and also got students started on their research and offered a usable interface.“ As our students are increasingly digital natives, we can expect them to be more open to crowdsourced technologies like Wikipedia.

The Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education developed by the Association of College and Research Libraries is in the revision process at the time of this writing (May 2014). It defines information literacy: 62